Geospatial world 2004

Geospatial World 2004 (GSW04), the annual gathering of the Intergraph Geospatial users community sponsored by Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions and was the fourth major conference since it started in the year 2000. The event this year was held at the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort, Miami, Florida, USA from May 12 to 14.

“Open. Solutions. Exchange.” – That was the punch line of the Geospatial World 2004 Conference. These three words had its overpowering effect right from the inception and lingered on for the three eventful days of the conference with varied interpretations that addressed and set the agenda for the conference aptly – an agenda of ‘openness, solutions and exchange’.

“Intergraph technology makes the world safer and more prosperous,” declared Halsey Wise, President and CEO, Intergraph Corporation, in his candid keynote address and hoped that the conference would bring to its attendees – cases, papers, discussions, products, techniques and issues that can lead to a better understanding of the potential of geospatial sciences in enabling organizations take better decisions.

Impressive keynote speeches captivated the packed audience of about 600 during the opening ceremony and set the ball rolling for the three-day conference on geospatial sciences.

To make sense of a complex world Day 1 started off with an articulate opening speech by Halsey Wise, President and CEO, Intergraph Corporation. He broadly covered three areas: Intergraph in brief, description of the main divisions and their activities, and the vision of the organization. He projected the future of geospatial industry to be positive and prospective. He also emphasized on Intergraph’s dedication ‘to make sense of a complex world’. Halsey mentioned that Intergraph is a global provider, enabling organizations (both government and private) to make the right decisions at the right time with the right information. He emphasized upon the importance of industry standards and stated, “We aspire to lead by setting standards that others emulate”.

Asserting the healthy position of the organization, the investor’s confidence and the potential, he emphasized on the transition of Intergraph from being a vendor of proprietary GIS to an organization of open solutions.

Preetha Pulusani, President, Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions, in her keynote speech positioned the company in the geospatial domain and gave promising glimpses of the future of this discipline. Various issues were touched upon.

She advocated the need for a new mindset that is required for experts in GIS or even users – ‘to stop isolating GIS.’ “GIS is mainstream and an integral part of any process that tries to visualize complex interrelationships of data or information with a specific purpose of generating intelligence. GIS or related sciences need to be amalgamated into workflows of government and organizations on their own prerogative. GIS is more of a decision support than anything else,” she opined.

She gave a very brief and lucid product update. Then she took her presentation all over the globe, picking up cases of Intergraph’s work in enabling the management of complex situations. She spoke of cases from South Korea, US, UK, Canada, Belgium, Macau, The Netherlands, China and many more.

She touched upon two important updates – Geomedia Fusion and Intergraph Synergy Programme. Geomedia Fusion is a new product to be launched by the end of this year that basically shall be a tool to integrate datasets of various scales and origins. Intergraph Synergy Programme is a programme that has been re-christened from its earlier Team Geomedia emphasis.

Under this programme Intergraph seeks to reach out across the globe for partnering with organizations’ research, development and solutions in the geospatial domain. She also talked of the strong bond between Intergraph and Education.

Other vital speeches also were meted out from key personnel of Intergraph like Art Spencer, who spoke at length with heavy emphasis on the role of geospatial sciences in return on investment (RoI). Umit Basoglu spoke on geospatial intelligence. David D Holmes mentioned elaborately all the product ranges available and products awaiting release in near future.